“We must not forget,” he said, putting down his hat on the floor, “that our late lamented friend was carried out of this place only to-day. To call his arrangements absurd so soon is surely, if I may say so, not in good taste.”
“Oh, as for good taste--” cried the rector imperatively, with a sneer upon his lips; but he stopped himself in time. He would not get into any altercation, he said to himself; it was bad enough to be confronted with Dissenters, to have one of these fanatics actually sitting down with him at the same table, but to suffer himself to be led into a controversy! “As for that,” he said, “my mind is easy enough. But here is a very simple question--”
“Shall you serve, Dr. Beresford, or do you decline it?” Mr. Rushton said.
This was a question more simple still. The rector turned round and stared at the other with a confused and bewildered countenance. This was not at all what he meant. He paused for a moment, and reflected before he made any answer: would he serve, or did he decline it? Very simple, but not so easy to answer: would he have a finger in the pie, or give it up altogether? would he accept the mysterious position, and keep the dear privilege of control, and the power of saying who was not to marry Lucy Trevor, though he cared little for Lucy Trevor, or would he show his sense of the folly of the arrangement by rejecting any share in it? It was, though so simple, a difficult question, much more difficult than to set down the old man, who was not a Churchman, as a fool. It did not please him, however, to accept the latter alternative; he was a man who dearly liked to have a finger in every pie.
“Oh, ah! indeed! yes, to be sure. That is how you put it,” he said.
“Yes, that is the only way to put it,” said Mr. Rushton; “we can’t compel any one to accept the charge, but we have a few names behind with which to fill up, should any one object. My client was full of foresight,” he added, with a smile; “he was very long-headed, wrong-headed too, if you like, sometimes, but sharp as a needle. He thought his little girl a great prize.”
“And so she will be,” said the rector, almost with solemnity; and he was silent for a moment, as if in natural awe of Lucy’s greatness; but within himself he was mentally vowing that, if Rushton tried to run his boy for such large stakes, he, the rector, would take care that he did not have it all his own way. Dr. Beresford, though he was an excellent clergyman, was not above the use of slang now and then, nor was he too good for a resolution which had a little of the vindictive in it. “Must we be called together to be consulted?” he said, with a laugh; “there’s something of the kind in an old play. Will the candidate appear before us, and state his qualifications?” The rector again permitted himself to laugh, but nobody responded. Mr. Rushton, though he condemned the will in private, had sufficient professional feeling to decline to join in any open ridicule of it, and Ford, who felt himself in the dignified attitude of a mourner, allowed nothing to disturb his seriousness. Mr. Williamson was smoothing his hat with disapproving gravity, polishing it heavily round and round, as though he found some carnal tendency in it which had to be repressed.